Familiar patterns in foreign field
Could this be a rebel year?
However, if history is any indicator, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's "Amores Perros," from Mexico, would seem to be the distant underdog among the field of five; when it comes to the Globes, Mexico is rarely nominated.
But the HFPA, the body of 89 foreign entertainment journalists who select the Globes each year, has an interesting habit of rebelling against historic pattern from time to time, and "Amores Perros" could bring out the group's contrarian streak this year. According to some HFPA members who attended numerous screening of the eligible foreign films, Innaritu's twisty drama set in Mexico City was right up there with Lee's rousing martial-arts epic as the most talked-about film in the field.
Lee, with his third foreign Globes nomination in the past decade (as well as the helmer of 1995 best picture winner, the English-language "Sense and Sensibility"), remains enormously popular with the HFPA.
So, too, are Leconte and Tornatore, enjoying their second nominations (Leconte was previously up for 1996's "Ridicule," and Tornatore won in 1990 for "Cinema Paradiso").
Giordana's true-life drama about a young Sicilian man's battle against the entrenched local Mafia was considered a surprise official selection from Italy for the foreign-language Oscar, upsetting the acclaimed "Bread and Tulips," and is also a surprise selection for the Globes. Its long-shot status is underlined by the fact that it's the only nominee without a U.S. distributor in place.
But auguring well for "The Hundred Steps" is that it is from Italy, second (along with Germany) behind France as the country with the most Globes nominations since 1990.
By that measure, however, Leconte's "Widow" appears strongest, since France is by far the most nominated country since 1990 (16 nominations) and the biggest winner (three Globes).
In other words, seemingly like everything else in America these days, it's a wide-open race.
"This is anyone's year," says HFPA member Marianne Ruuth, "because the artistic and technical quality of the films was so high. There was no way to guess which films would be nominated this time, which isn't always the case. It was hard selecting five; I could have voted for 10."
According to sources, several films, including Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love," Liv Ullmann's "Faithless" and Lukas Moodysson's "Together" (the latter pair from Sweden), received strong reactions at screenings, yet failed to make the nominations cut.
Thomas O'Neil, author of Variety's "Movie Awards," observes that the HFPA voting tends to have a double-sided character.
"On one hand, they can be more hip than Oscar voters," he says. "When 'Ma Vie en Rose,' from Belgium, won the foreign Globe in the year it wasn't even nominated by the Academy, it was very telling. On the other hand, they can also be more brazenly commercial, picking box office hits like 'The Red Violin' from Canada last year."
That pattern is maintained this year, with "Amores Perros" the hipster choice and "Crouching Tiger" a dominant B.O. champ. Regardless of favorites or dark horses, there's surprisingly little in the Globes' foreign-language film race that anticipates the race on the Oscar side.
Though the larger candidate field is similar in number this time (41 for the Globes, 46 for the Oscars), 22 of the eligible Globes candidates were not among the official foreign Oscar entries. This is partly explained by the differences in each group's rules: While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences restricts one film per country, the HFPA applies no such limits; this year, France was represented by five films, Italy and Germany had four each, and the Czech Republic had three.
The character of the Globes and Oscar foreign fields is further contrasted from a commercial standpoint. While only eight Oscar entries have U.S. distributors, 19 of the eligible Globes films have Stateside distributors, led by Sony Pictures Classics with eight. (The company only has one nominee, though, with "Crouching Tiger," while Lions Gate has both of its films, "Widow" and "Amores Perros," in the final five.)
A further sign of how the foreign Globes and Oscars part ways is that since 1990, there is strikingly little overlap in the nominated films selected by each group. Only in three years were there three films in common, and in two years, there were none. The average since 1990 is less than two a year.
"Part of the reason for that," says O'Neil, "is that the Hollywood Foreign Press doesn't enjoy the luxury of time the Academy enjoys. (The HFPA) must come out with their nominations before Christmas, and before many critics groups have made their picks. The Academy has much more time to consider the field.
"Plus, it has a republican selection process of one film from each submitting country, much like how each of the 50 states has two senators. The Globes are more classically democratic.
"Both awards races are playing a different game. The Oscars never exclude foreign-language films from general awards consideration. The Globes do, which is ironic for a group of foreign correspondents."
The HFPA voting rules, permitting only English-language films to compete in general categories and allotting foreign-lingo pics to a separate category, is unique among voting groups.
"Most groups don't set a boundary," notes O'Neil.
